Thursday, 1 December 2016

One of the effects of the return of the execrable crudfest that is "Hunting Hitler" is that all manner of conspiracists come out of the woodwork - on Twitter and elsewhere - to air their preposterous theories, in sympathy with the nonsense spouted by the dubious "experts" that front the show.

In amongst that cornucopia of claptrap is a long-standing piece of idiocy regarding Martin Bormann.

Martin Bormann
a master of horticultural deception
- or not...

Allow me to elucidate... Martin Bormann - Hitler's Party Secretary and the 'eminence grise' of the Third Reich - was last seen alive on 2 May 1945 by Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann. Together with Bormann, Axmann had been part of a group that have left the Reich Chancellery Bunker and had headed north on Friedrichstrasse, reaching the Spree at the Weidendammer Bridge. Soon after, Axmann left the group before doubling back on himself. Then, he claimed to have seen the bodies of both Bormann and SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger, not far from the Lehrter Station.

Aside from Axmann's story, however, no other contemporary account of Bormann's fate was ever given. He was tried 'in absentia' at Nuremberg, and declared legally deceased in 1954, despite the fact that the West German government continued looking for him - officially at least - until 1971.

Then, in 1972, construction workers near the Lehrter Station in Berlin discovered the remains of two men, who were identified through dental records to be Bormann and Stumpfegger. With the development of new technology, in due course - in 1998 - Bormann's remains were conclusively identified to be his via DNA testing, providing a match to his son Martin Bormann junior. With that - for most sane individuals - the Bormann story draws to its definitive end. Martin Bormann died, on 2 May, close to the Lehrter Station in Berlin...

But - according to our conspiracist friends - there is a twist. They maintain that Bormann's remains contained traces of a red soil that is not native to Berlin. Instead, they say, the soil is the same as that of some region of Paraguay or of Argentina... Cue dramatic music.. Dun dun daaaa...

Bormann's body was passed to his heirs after the DNA tests were carried out and was cremated, so this theory is impossible to test - even if we would wish to. However, let us just think of the logical implications of this daft theory for a moment...

The conspiracists' story would run as follows. Bormann - far from dying on 2 May in Berlin - somehow escaped the Nazi capital and went to live in South America. Then, when he died, his body was presumably buried, in Paraguay (or elsewhere), then exhumed, packaged up, and taken back to Berlin by persons unknown and surreptitiously reburied close to the Lehrter Station, not far from where he had last been seen in 1945, so as to give the world an alibi; to cover up the 'fact' that Bormann had escaped. And all this happened without the people involved being intercepted by the German or Paraguayan authorities or being spotted or betrayed by anyone...

(Oh - as an aside - One question for the conspiracist cretins - what about Stumpfegger? Did he go to South America too? So, was he also flown back to Berlin after his death? Or did he actually die in 1945 and those persons unknown had some secret knowledge of where he was buried so that Bormann could be carefully placed next to him? I think we need to know!)

Hmm. Forgive me for being a spoilsport - but every fibre of my being is crying out that this cockamayme tale can only be arrant horseshit. Is it not just possible that Bormann died and was buried IN BERLIN, IN 1945, a few yards from where he was last seen?! Is that not a more logical solution to the conundrum? Is it not infinitely more logical than the idea that he escaped to South America, died, was buried, was exhumed, flown back to Berlin, and reburied, close to where he had last been seen...?

I know that conspiracy theorists have - by definition - a tenuous grasp of concepts like "logic", "facts" and "probability" - but Jeez...

It would not surprise me in the least if this idiotic tale gets an airing in the current series of Hunting Hitler - but then again idiocy and conspiracy theories often travel hand in hand...